> "Brave New World predicted this. We are removed from community and it is scary so we find one on the internet and we go all in."
That isn't how I remember Brave New World; it was about amusing ourselves to death with trivia instead of dealing with "important" things, but the sense of community in it was pretty strong - people grew up with and lived with the same local group of people, worked together, played Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy together, orgied together, and took soma to keep them all content. The main complaint they all had was why Bernard couldn't just be happy and join in the community.
Brave New World celebrated the twist-reveal where Bernard learns that exile to Iceland isn't a gulag but is really joining a distant group of people who don't like the society and want to live their own way like he does. I'm never sure if that should be taken at face value, or if it was a lie and the place was really a prison camp, but let's assume it was an honest and accurate reveal - that would be the opposite of your complaint, Bernard was lost and scared at having no community, was pushed toward a remote one he might fit in, and the book is all about how great that is that he doesn't have to waste his life doing just what the people around him are doing and that he can feel closer aligned with a group across the world than someone right next to him, and should take advantage of that.
> "An escape from forever war all around us"
The forever war was 1984, and that's not about Winston joining the Marines to find meaning in his life, it's about using the two minutes' hate to reinforce tribe membership by uniting everyone against a hate figure/group, and the strong (IngSoc) beating down the weak (objectors) until everyone is stamped into the same shape (boot on human face / industrial machine moulding stamp), the reveal at the end of 1984 isn't that Winston joined the Marines and escaped the forever war like Bernard escaped the trivia, it's that Winston came to love Big Brother and agree with everything good that Big Brother is and was and always would be, it's the equivalent of Bernard taking the soma and blending into the society and agreeing it was right all along, it's one or other of your Maga hat and Antifa supporter becoming overwhelmingly dominant, the state enforcing it, and the other being subsumed by it and liking it until there isn't anything else.
> "internet/phone addiction is not a problem its a solution. I guess war is inescapable."
Hence the Yin-Yang forever circling each other. There's no solution to whether white or black is better, or whether matter or energy is better, or whether hot is better than cold, both books posit an end - one that is either agreeable or disagreeable to the reader, but an end nonetheless - real life doesn't have ends it has circles, loops, repeats, back and forths, changing fortunes, ups and downs, births and deaths.
Maga hat and Antifa supporter both love their America, and their America doesn't include murdering thy neighbor. They might "want to kill each other" but each would like the other one realising how dumb they are and changing sides.
> their America doesn't include murdering thy neighbor. They might "want to kill each other"
Well, you can find a lot of message boards in which they fantasize about doing this. And it sells a lot of weapons. But the energy barrier is high; people like Kyle Rittenhouse cross it only rarely enough that they can be dismissed as isolated incidents. It's not every day that someone blows up a telephone exchange. Just another isolated incident.
That isn't how I remember Brave New World; it was about amusing ourselves to death with trivia instead of dealing with "important" things, but the sense of community in it was pretty strong - people grew up with and lived with the same local group of people, worked together, played Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy together, orgied together, and took soma to keep them all content. The main complaint they all had was why Bernard couldn't just be happy and join in the community.
Brave New World celebrated the twist-reveal where Bernard learns that exile to Iceland isn't a gulag but is really joining a distant group of people who don't like the society and want to live their own way like he does. I'm never sure if that should be taken at face value, or if it was a lie and the place was really a prison camp, but let's assume it was an honest and accurate reveal - that would be the opposite of your complaint, Bernard was lost and scared at having no community, was pushed toward a remote one he might fit in, and the book is all about how great that is that he doesn't have to waste his life doing just what the people around him are doing and that he can feel closer aligned with a group across the world than someone right next to him, and should take advantage of that.
> "An escape from forever war all around us"
The forever war was 1984, and that's not about Winston joining the Marines to find meaning in his life, it's about using the two minutes' hate to reinforce tribe membership by uniting everyone against a hate figure/group, and the strong (IngSoc) beating down the weak (objectors) until everyone is stamped into the same shape (boot on human face / industrial machine moulding stamp), the reveal at the end of 1984 isn't that Winston joined the Marines and escaped the forever war like Bernard escaped the trivia, it's that Winston came to love Big Brother and agree with everything good that Big Brother is and was and always would be, it's the equivalent of Bernard taking the soma and blending into the society and agreeing it was right all along, it's one or other of your Maga hat and Antifa supporter becoming overwhelmingly dominant, the state enforcing it, and the other being subsumed by it and liking it until there isn't anything else.
> "internet/phone addiction is not a problem its a solution. I guess war is inescapable."
Hence the Yin-Yang forever circling each other. There's no solution to whether white or black is better, or whether matter or energy is better, or whether hot is better than cold, both books posit an end - one that is either agreeable or disagreeable to the reader, but an end nonetheless - real life doesn't have ends it has circles, loops, repeats, back and forths, changing fortunes, ups and downs, births and deaths.
Maga hat and Antifa supporter both love their America, and their America doesn't include murdering thy neighbor. They might "want to kill each other" but each would like the other one realising how dumb they are and changing sides.